Songs of former dock workers set to music
Print Edition
AS machines replaced manual labor in ports up and down the Huangpu River, the traditional songs of workmen that once wafted across the waters have disappeared.
Two groups of retired dockworkers in the Pudong New Area and Yangpu District believe they are worth reviving, even without loads on their shoulders.
The Shanghai Conservatory of Music thinks so, too. Experts there want to create a music and video archive to try to recapture the lost sounds of history.
“Jah-loh-lung-say!
Hey-yah-loh-hoh, hey-yah-loh-hoh, hey-yah-loh!”
At the Tangqiao Community Cultural Center in Pudong, 20 or so members of a musical troupe gather to perform old dock work songs.
Han Weiguo, 71, a former dockworker, is among them. He recalls starting work 44 years ago and hearing workmen sing songs that he considered “crazy stuff” at first. “I thought it was funny that people should be singing meaningless stuff while working,” he remembers.
But he quickly learned that the songs were integral to the pace of work and the camaraderie among laborers.
“The purpose was to synchronize steps when a few people were working together to unload and load freight that sometimes weighed hundreds of kilograms,” he said. “The singing simply ensured the safety of the workers.”
Usually one of the workers in the front row sang the lead, and others responded to his words.
“History has it that 16 dock workers in Shanghai once used eight sticks to carry and deliver something that weighed two tons, and that couldn’t have been done without work songs,” said Li Zhihao, a researcher at the Shanghai Mass Art Center, which has been studying maritime work songs since the 1970s. The songs were sung in various Chinese dialects because workers were recruited from all over China as Shanghai’s port prominence soared in the 1840s.
“Most of the manual laborers were from northern Jiangsu and Hubei provinces,” Han said. “Those from the city of Ningbo were among the better educated and served as taskmasters or bookkeepers. They ordered workers around, but they gave orders by singing, too.”
He said there were even “Chinglish” words in the songs, reflecting international influences in the ports.
In Tangqiao, Han has taken a lead in reviving the thumping and stomping work songs of the old dock days. Among the first to join the effort 11 years ago was Liang Jianrong, 69, a former port mechanic who worked loading and unloading cargoes for two years around 1970.
Liang said hearing the old songs again tugged at his heartstrings.
“Tears came to my eyes,” he said. “I remembered how backbreaking the work was and how I was covered with sweat and my shoulders ached. At first, I didn’t think I could sing and relive those days, but my friends here urged me to continue.”
Liang and fellow troupe members now bask in their stature as one of the last bastions of a local cultural legacy. They have won prizes on nationwide folk song competitions and even travelled abroad to take part in international folk art festivals.
“The work songs of the docks are a reminder of not only the history of laborers, but also of Shanghai’s essence as a city of hardworking, inclusive people,” said Jin Zhonghe, a 62-year-old troupe member and former shipyard worker. The amateur effort of transcribing old recordings into musical scores has been supported by professional expertise.
“Experts generally have a better ear for music and can perform the job more efficiently and precisely,” said Zhou Xianglin, a professor from the Shanghai Conservatory of Music, who is in charge of a project liaising with the Tangqiao troupe. “And for the first time, we will help document the movements of the singers from old videos.”
Further north, in the Yangpu District, 14 old dockworkers formed a song troupe in the Dinghai community in 2013. To date, they have recorded 20 songs from a songbook compiled in the 1960s.
Wang Tianya, vice director of Dinghai’s Culture Office, said retired dockworkers were indispensable to the project.
“Sometimes when the singers belted out notes according to the scores, Jia Zhihu, our only master of work songs, would shake his head and say the tune wasn’t true to the original,” she said.
Most of the members in the Pudong and Yangpu troupes are 65 years or older. Those involved in the projects said they are hoping to spur some interest in the folk art among younger people to help preserve cultural heritage down the generations.
In Tangqiao, a video lecture series by troupe members was recently completed. It will become part of the local school curriculum. And modern-day dockworkers are being tapped as inheritors of the song art.
In Dinghai, a stage drama about dockworkers and a children’s musical also based on that legacy have been performed in the community.
“It’s not realistic to expect children to sing like seasoned dockworkers, but it’s important for them to understand how the work songs are part of their cultural heritage,” said Lu Lin, an official at the Yangpu branch of the Shanghai Intangible Cultural Heritage Protection Center.
But Luo Jianchuan, director of the Tangqiao Community Cultural Activities Center, said he believes that music professionals are needed to ensure the full impact of the songs.
“Otherwise, audiences might get easily bored with the chants,” he said. “By integrating them into a format that is fun, catchy and pleasing to hear, the songs will endure. Pop stars are beginning to weave folk music into rock, so why not reincarnate dock work songs into something more exciting and inspiring?”
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